Memorial Resolution: Moses
Abramovitz

MOSES
ABRAMOVITZ

(1912-2000)

Moses Abramovitz, William Robertson Coe Professor of American
Economic History Emeritus, died December 1, 2000, at Stanford
University Hospital, just one month before reaching his
eighty-ninth birthday.

Known by his family, friends, and colleagues as "Moe,"
Abramovitz was one of the primary builders of Stanford's Department
of Economics. He taught at Stanford for almost thirty years, taking
leave only during 1962-63 to work as economic advisor to the
secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development in Paris. He served as chair from 1963 to 1965, and
from 1971 to 1974, both critical junctures in the department's
history. During his tenure at Stanford and after his retirement in
1976, Moe gained international renown and admiration for his
pioneering contributions to the study of long-term economic
growth.

Moe
was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Romanian Jewish immigrant
family. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, he entered
Harvard in 1928. Like many of his generation, Moe's interest in
economics was stimulated by the experience of the Great Depression.
So, in 1932 he continued his undergraduate studies of the subject
at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1939. At
Columbia, Moe began a lifelong friendship with Milton Friedman. In
later years, Moe liked to joke that he had been debating with
Friedman for more than fifty years, and consistently winning --
except when Milton was present. Columbia connections also led Moe
to join the National Bureau of Economic Research in 1937, where he
helped to launch the business cycle studies for which the Bureau
became famous, working with such figures as Wesley Mitchell, Simon
Kuznets and Arthur Burns.

Also at Columbia, Moe became re-acquainted with his Erasmus
classmate Carrie Glasser, who was also working for her doctoral
degree in economics. Moe and Carrie were married in June of 1937,
and were devoted to each other until Carrie's death in October
1999. When Moe came to Stanford in 1948, Carrie began what became a
highly satisfying and successful career as a painter, sculptress
and collage artist. Their only son, Joel, born in 1946, is a
practicing neurosurgeon in Connecticut.

During World War II, Moe served first at the War Production
Board, working with Simon Kuznets to analyze the limits of feasible
production during wartime. He then moved to the Office of Strategic
Services as chief of the European industry and trade section.
During 1945 and 1946, he was economic advisor to the United States
representative on the Allied Reparations Commission. Moe's modest
but strong character was well displayed in an episode during the
postwar reparations debate. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau had
proposed a plan to deindustrialize the German economy. An OSS
research team headed by Moe wrote a memorandum arguing that this
plan would destroy Germany's capacity to export, leaving it unable
to pay for food and other essential imports. At a meeting with Moe
and two other OSS economists, Ed Mason and Emile Despres,
Morgenthau angrily asked: "Who is responsible for this?" Moe
recalled: "Mason looked at Despres, and Emile looked at me. I had
no one else to look at. The buck stopped with me. So, rather
meekly, I said I was responsible."

This anecdote and many others may be found in a charming
memoir that Moe completed shortly before his death, "Days Gone By,"
accessible on the Stanford Economics Department website.

At
Stanford Moe began the studies of long-term economic growth that
established his reputation among professional economists. A 1956
paper provided the first systematic estimates showing that forces
raising the productivity of labor and capital were responsible for
approximately half of the historical growth rate of real U.S. GDP,
and close to three quarters of the growth rate of real GDP per
capita. Subsequently he made seminal contributions in identifying
the factors promoting and obstructing convergence in levels of
productivity among advanced and developing countries of the world.
For these studies and others, Moe received many academic honors. He
was elected to the presidency of the American Economic Association
(1979-80), the Western Economic Association (1988-89), and the
Economic History Association (1992-93). From abroad came honorary
doctorates from the University of Uppsala in Sweden (1985), and the
University of Ancona in Italy (1992); he took special enjoyment
from an invitation to become a fellow of the prestigious Academia
Nazionale de Lincei in 1991 -- "following Galileo with a lag," he
said, with a characteristic self-deprecatory twinkle.